Insanity after Midnight
by emebalia
Summary: Tag to 7x01. The police investigates a rather strange break-in and somebody has to interview the witnesses. Outsider POV.


**Insanity after Midnight**

Officer Alice Jones took in the scene in front of her. The flickering lights of the police cars illuminated the house and the driveway in an eery interplay of light and shadow.

The whole property spoke of wealth and old names. Pillar of the community, public buildings named after them, that kind of stuff. Alice let out a sigh.

There was an ambulance among the police cars. A security guard had been knocked out but as far as Alice knew his injuries weren't life-threatening. The Weisses, however, had come through unharmed. Physically at least, Alice didn't want to think about how they must have felt when they'd been threatened and tied up in their own house. It was nothing they would just shrug off, things like this always left a mark.

She made her way past fellow officers and forensic guys and with every step she clutched the notepad tighter in her hand. She had interviewed witnesses before, otherwise her boss wouldn't have sent her here, but this was the first time she had to interview somebody who could end her career with one phone call. Okay, that was maybe a little over-dramatic but the Weisses were people you better not piss off.

Alice found the couple in the living room, if those terms even applied here, the whole house looked more like a museum than a place where people actually lived in.

Yellow tape separated the part where the couple sat on a couch from the actual crime scene. The latter looked rather unspectacular, Alice had to admit.

Two chairs with the cut restrains still pooled around the legs, other chairs moved out of the way – if by the suspects or the forensics she couldn't tell – and a desk with some things scattered around she couldn't quite make out from this distance. However, the two forensic guys in their white rompers seemed to have fun.

"Dr. Weiss? Mrs. Weiss?" Alice approached the visibly shaken couple on the couch. He had his arm around her shoulder and when they looked up to Alice, their eyes were too big and their faces too pale.

"I'm Officer Jones." She introduced herself. "May I ask you a few questions?"

They shook hands and Alice took a seat in the chair next to them. She flicked her notepad open and waited for them to tell their story.

From what Alice had heard beforehand this had been a rather strange break-in but she tried to keep an open mind and hear their part of the story first.

"Can you tell me what happened?" She gave them an opening.

"I woke up." Dr. Weiss started. "There were noises in the house."

"I woke up and had to shake him awake." Mrs. Weiss interrupted with a glare at her husband. "James would have slept through a bomb detonating next to our bed."

Dr. Weiss cleared his throat but didn't deny it.

Alice suppressed a smile.

"So, you were both awake." She brought the interview back to topic. "What happened then?"

"I took my gun and went to have a look around." He seemed rather proud of himself.

"Not that I had to push you or something." Mrs. Weiss muttered.

"I've a permission." He added, ignoring his wife.

"But you haven't been to the shooting range once." She leaned in to Alice as if she was about to tell her a secret. "I thought he would shoot his own foot. Or mine. That's why that man disarmed him so easily."

"He surprised me."

"I'm the one with the firearm, son." She imitated her husband's voice and now Alice really had to fight the urge to smile to that. At least their ordeal didn't seem to have a lasting effect on them. Or this was just a way to deal with the initial shock. However, they were quite entertaining, Alice had to admit. Those two had been married for way too long.

"Next thing I knew, he was tying us to the chairs." She nodded towards said chairs. One of the forensics had put the cut bindings in evidence bags by now so they were just ordinary chairs again.

"Can you describe the man?"

"Tall. Handsome." She answered with a dreamy little smile.

Now it was her husband's turn to glare at her.

"What? He was." She shrugged it off.

"Anyway." Dr. Weiss took over again. "While he tied us to the chairs two more men came in."

"One was older, around James' age." Mrs. Weiss added. "The other one was younger, I'd say close to the first one. But he was taller."

"Okay." Alice made a mental note to bring them in in the morning and see if they couldn't get some pictures of the suspects. "What did the men want?"

"The fulgurite." Dr. Weiss pointed at an empty display case.

Alice had no idea what a fulgurite was.

"It's a crystallized lightning." Mrs. Weiss took pity on her. "They occur when the lightning hits the right ground in the right angle. One this size is very rare."

"They stole it?" Alice asked. Rare usually translated to a lot of dollars.

"Not exactly." Dr. Weiss' eyes wandered over to the desk with the left-over stuff the forensics had quite some fun with. "They destroyed it."

"Why would they do that?" That didn't make sense. Who knocked out a guard, broke into the house, disarmed and tied down the owners just to break some fancy crystal?

"Because they were crazy." Dr. Weiss snapped. "Devil worshippers with their satanic rituals."

"It was just like in one of those horror movies." Mrs. Weiss confirmed. "Burning herbs, chanting in Latin, that kind of thing."

"I told you, you shouldn't watch those." He interrupted her. "Some day you're the one chanting in Latin."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"They did some kind of ritual?" Alice had to make that point clear. This shed a whole new light on the case. Now the left-overs on the desk made more sense.

They both nodded in unison.

"Do you know what they tried to do?" This was far-fetched but maybe they had picked up something that could tell Alice what the men had been up to.

"They tried to summon Death." Mrs. Weiss answered in a low voice.

"Okay." Alice sat back in her chair. "What did they do when it didn't work?"

"Who said it didn't work?" She added in an even lower voice.

"What?"

"They performed the ritual and then the first man, the one who disarmed James, called his name. Death." She made a dramatic pause. "And then he was there."

"He came through the door." Dr. Weiss added, throwing Alice a look, clearly telling her that she shouldn't take his wife too serious.

"Did you see him coming through the door?" Mrs. Weiss shot back. "No, you didn't. Suddenly he was just there."

"What did he look like?" Alice asked carefully. This had taken a rather unexpected turn.

"Like an older gentleman." Dr. Weiss stepped in. "I must have been distracted for a moment, it was a rather stressful experience after all. He was just a man and he came through the door." The last part was more meant for his wife than Alice, though.

"If you say so."

"So there were now four men in here." Alice summed up the situation. They could work out where the new man had come from later. "What did they do?"

"The handsome man offered Death fried pickle chips." Mrs. Weiss seemed a little bit embarrassed by that.

Alice just sat there in stunned silence, notepad forgotten in her hand.

"They were delusional." Dr. Weiss said. "All of them. This Death guy even accused one of the others of having hallucinations. That should tell you enough, Officer."

Alice just nodded to that, by now she was only writing down what the couple was telling her.

_Maybe somebody has pulled the weirdest prank ever,_ Alice thought to herself. This was too weird to be real.

"And then?" She prompted but wasn't sure if she really wanted to know.

"The asked him to kill God." Mrs. Weiss continued when Dr. Weiss didn't answer.

"They what?"

"Like I said, delusional." He added.

"They wanted Death to kill God." Mrs. Weiss repeated. "And then he was there."

"God?"

"A guy in a trench coat." Now Dr. Weiss took over again. "Played right into this satanic nonsense. And he also came through the door." With the last part he glared at his wife. "And this Death character said he wasn't God."

"I never said I thought he was actually God." She shot back. "But I've watched the news. About this man in a trench coat? That was him."

Alice never had religious ambitions but over the last few days the deaths of religious leaders had been all over the news. You just couldn't avoid it.

"Did he kill him?" Alice asked the important question. If somebody had been murdered here, it would change everything.

"No, but he threatened to kill the handsome man if he called him again."

Ten minutes later Alice thanked them for their time and left. Outside she took a deep breath of the fresh night air. Most of the cars had left by now and everything had calmed down.

Back in her car she flipped through her notes. This was without a doubt the weirdest break-in she'd ever seen. There was nothing stolen except for the lightning thing the unsubs had destroyed. Other than that there had been a lot of crazy talk, the Weisses hadn't been sure about the details here, and then the men had left.

"At least Death liked the pickle chips." Alice shook her head and started the car.


End file.
